Venus Colonization
Recently there have been some new developments in the field of rocketry which would be helpful in our ability to colonize Venus, one major sticking point is the deep gravity well of the planet, which would require a rocket of similar capacity to the ones on the launch pads of Earth capable of launching satellites into low Earth orbit. Of particular note is the Falcon 9 and its family of rockets under development by SpaceX. The Mars Colonial Transporter (Interplanetary Transport System) Now the founder of SpaceX has announced his goal to colonize Mars and he has unveiled his proposal for the Mars Colonial Transport, otherwise known as the Interplanetary Transport System (ITS), the proposal is to build a gigantic rocket with reusable stages, the first stage boosts the upper stage into a suborbital trajectory, the upper stage uses its rocket engines and fuel supply to complete the journey into low Earth orbit, the bottom stage then reenters the Earth's atmosphere lands on the launch pad and is refueled and another upper stage with a fuel tank is loaded on top of the bottom stage the bottom stage is relaunched carrying the new stack on a suborbital trajectory, the upper stage fires its rocket engines carrying its load to fuel to the upper stage of the Interplanetary Transporter and docks with it, the fuel is transferred to the Transporter, the tanker stage then returns to Earth, landing on a launch pad, and it is refueled and the process is repeated a number of times until the upper stage is fully fueled to reach its destination, in this case it would be Venus. In the illustration, the vehicle on the left is the ITS in its launch pad configuration, followed by a Falcon Heavy, followed by Big Ben, and followed by a Falcon 9. The Falcon 9 is used to shuttle things from Low Venusian Orbit to the Atmosphere of Venus and back again. Falcon 9 Rocket Using the ITS bottom stage and an upper stage, the parts of two stages of a Falcon 9 Rocket are assembled in orbit, this Vehicle is docked with the upper stage ITS vehicle and using its engines is boosted into Venus orbit. Both Stages are then dropped into Venus' atmosphere for a controlled rendezvous with a Venusian Aerostat. The Aerostat contains equipment for fuel production from the constituents of Venus' atmosphere and equipment to refuel each stage in the modified Falcon 9 rocket stack, the fuel is liquid methane and liquid oxygen. The launch vehicle is then assembled in the underbelly of the aerostat, and then is drop-launched. The rocket falls to a safe distance from the aerostat and then ignites its engines, the ship climbs to a suborbital trajectory and the bottom stage separates and returns to the Aerostat that launched it, the upper stage completes the journey to Low Venus Orbit where it docks with an ITS vehicle for the journey back to Earth. the Upper stage then reenters Venus' atmosphere, ad docks with the aerostat that launched it. the Aerostat then fuels up an upper tanker stage with manufactured fuel, assembles the launch vehicle with a recycled bottom stage, refuels it an then launches it into a suborbital trajectory, where the fuel tanker stage's engines take over and completes the journey to low Venus orbit, it then docks with the ITS vehicle, refuels it with locally produced fuel from Venus, and then when the planets line up right, it fires its engines for a return to Earth.